


a different kind of cold

by mikkelsex



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-16
Updated: 2016-02-16
Packaged: 2018-05-21 00:19:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6031213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mikkelsex/pseuds/mikkelsex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>from day one, kylo hadn’t liked the way He made him feel fragile. he didn’t like dreaming about His ribs, His calves, His teeth, His sleeptalking, the morning crust in His eyes – and yet he had hungered for Him, all of Him, everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a different kind of cold

for someone who had loved early mornings, kylo sure doesn’t enjoy waking.

opening his eyes is hard, because he might catch a glimpse of the vacancy in his bed or the one drawer that doesn’t have a million black garments struggling to break free from their slate-colored metal confines. he doesn’t want to imagine the chill left by the one warm thing that had once existed in his life; he doesn’t want to see imprints of the clean, folded t-shirts and underwear that used to rest neatly in that one drawer. 

he doesn’t want to see the sun crawling out from under his blinds as he rises – or subsequently, the vividness of the grapefruit that is set out at breakfast – or the searing edge of his lightsaber’s glow, rocking him to a fitful sleep. they all will look just a hair too close to that shrill, acute, incapacitating rejection that kylo had felt with every nerve in his body.

being conscious was hard enough and it was even harder for kylo to get his hands on enough alcohol to dissolve the frozen glaze that constricted his breathing these days. not all the parental severance in the world – the silence left by finished bedtime stories, the emptiness left by hands no longer held – could have prepared kylo for the pale apricot burns on his chest; He was a heat signature that kylo just couldn’t shake.

from day one, kylo hadn’t liked the way He made him feel fragile. he didn’t like dreaming about His ribs, His calves, His teeth, His sleeptalking, the morning crust in His eyes – and yet he had hungered for Him, all of Him, everything.

when It had happened, kylo didn’t fly into a fit of rage. instead, his mind turned to static and limestone. looking back on that moment, suspending it in time in order to analyze, his slow and steady disintegration after that point was telling. anger was something kylo could harness. fury was something that kylo was good at. 

but when He had cut him with those ending lines, kylo felt his daytime glow retreating into night.

if anything, he had gained exposure to a new challenge: forgiveness. kylo was having trouble learning the mechanics of that fickle word. 

sure, that ugly craving to be unmasked by Him wasn’t quite satisfied, but kylo wouldn’t let himself feel any more than miffed about it all. the way kylo saw it, he had dug his own grave, picked the thread count of his own burial shroud, sang his own funeral hymns. single-handedly, he had designed and built the platform for his sharpest humiliation to date. leaving no stone unturned, he had searched within himself for the freedom of mind to place the blame on himself, to punish himself for dreaming. 

but that felt so cliché. some sparkling, new intuition had decided that kylo could only be mad at Him for being so damn divine. kylo knew that he had to forgive Him, but His dream-like sunrise skin, the birdsong curve of His lips, His profile, His silhouette, His gait, His sunrise hair told kylo that he should never figure out how to forgive. in the halls, during meetings, in the shower, under the dusk-lit sheets, kylo was still starving for Him to reach out and shatter his icy exterior. 

the next best thing, kylo imagined, was forgetting. so he tried to pour his energy into running the ship, strengthening his fighting skills and above everything, avoiding His path, His eyes. and when the mental clutter threatened to overwhelm the fishbowl of his brain, kylo used the mindfulness that He had taught him to silence His secrets, His stolen looks and His travelogues that buzzed around in the graveyard of his head. he stuffed down his own curiosity, blueprints and lunchtime fantasies into his throat. 

still, when kylo laid his head down for the day or night or morning, that final length of root, that staunch strand nestled at the follicle, that ever-present basis of cancer was still pulsing within him and licking his insides with fire.

and it showed.

kylo was a different kind of cold, a different kind of silent. he took his meals without pleasure, made commands with sparse directives and could seldom be heard breathing. he never contributed to meetings because he was too busy probing for His slightest annoyance. he only wanted Him to be comfortable, he only wanted Him to be happy… 

this concentrated and even-more-ambiguous wordless presence frightened his subordinates witless. seldom anyone spoke about the Shift in kylo ren – they barely conferred amongst themselves. but the few whispers were enough: kylo had heard every self-contained private musing on the ship, he was aware of every theory. their sum total made his body ache more than it made it sing, so he added the pathetic consensus of the first order to his list of justifications for not doing much of anything in light of the Incident.

once months of self-pity and anguish had given his skin a deathly glow, made his hair brittle, ramped up his anxiety, kylo began to work toward resignation – the closest he could brush against inner peace.

nothing could erase the feeling of His soft hands from his brain. nothing could make him stop visualizing His smile from behind his eyelids. nothing could take the morning sickness from his breath. further, no one could sponge away the feeling of His hands, no one could eclipse the smile burned on his eyelids and no one could kiss the morning sickness from his breath.

these realizations, molded and reshaped each night before kylo fell asleep, spread over him a calming blanket of relief. from His smarting blow came another thing for which kylo could be grateful: that Hux had given a name to his general numbness.

**Author's Note:**

> if you want to feel even more kylux despair, listen to the song "deep in my heart" by the drums. that's the song from which this fic was born.


End file.
